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While parents may try to curb their children’s TV-watching habits by setting down ground rules such as no television after school or no TV in their bedrooms, it turns out that their own binges of the last three seasons of Game of Thrones or watching the Golf Channel all day may have a profound effect on the amount of time kids spend in front of the tube.

New research from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, published this week in the medical journal Pediatrics, reveals that parental TV habits matter a lot.

Dr. Amy Bleakley, the study’s author and a policy research scientist, found that children mimic their parents’ viewing habits based on how much TV parents consume, and that has even more of an effect than where a television is located or what viewing rules parents (try to) enforce.

“The best predictor of children’s TV time is their parents’ TV time,” Bleakley said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report’s HealthDay blog.

“If mom and dad automatically turn on the TV when they have free time, it’s likely that their kids will learn to do the same.”

An online survey conducted in March 2012 looked at 1,500 parents with kids 17 years old or under. The number included 629 adolescents in the age groups of five years or younger, six to 11, and 12 to 17.

Bleakley and her team asked questions regarding how much time parents and teenagers spent watching TV, DVDs, or movies and other shows on their computers.

They also looked at how many rooms had computers with Internet access and what rules were enforced. On average, parents watched about four hours of TV, while children watched three hours. Out of the total number of child participants, 46 per cent had a TV in their bedroom.

Results showed that each hour of adult TV time meant an additional half-hour for their children. Other findings showed that house rules on time limits and the location of the TV were not as influential as parental viewing patterns.

The six- to 11-year-old kids were the only group that showed reduced viewing time when time restrictions were imposed. Yet parents were surprised to learn their adolescent kids watched one more hour of TV than they had estimated.

Researchers say they hope the findings will encourage a reduction in excessive television watching and less time glued to the couch. Parents who are aware of their own habits and create a more family-based approach to screen-time help themselves as well as their whole family.

The Canadian Paediatric Society discourages screen-based activities such as TV and video games for children under two.

They suggest parents limit daily viewing to less than one to two hours per day for older kids and that family activities such as hiking or attending arts and culture events should take precedence over TV viewing.

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